Trendwatching and Else look at the future of CX with immersive event

Else, an experience design consultancy, hosted an evening event on 27 July, in partnership with consumer insight and trends outfit TrendWatching, where they brought client-side innovators together to define the future of customer experience in their industries.

In its debut quarterly event, The Future of CX was both a celebration and a provocation to individuals and companies building compelling real world experiences for their users. Representatives from a number of bluechip companies, including Shell, UBS, Unilever, Jaguar Land Rover, Nationwide, Ipsos Mori and The AA, descended on Wapping to listen to talks and discuss the emerging trends and approaches to dealing with them.

The evening kicked off with a talk from TrendWatching’s Henry Mason, who presented the latest trends. Henry, author of Trend-Driven Innovation, talked about seizing customer attention and saving customer time and demonstrated a selection of opportunities that had been exploited by a variety of companies.

Warren Hutchinson, founder of Else, then expanded on the application of the seize and save concepts, as a way of thinking that enables businesses to make sense of macro trends in relation to their products and services; he explained: “You are being measured against the last great experience someone had. It might not even be a competitor or even in the same industry.” Hutchinson highlighted Else’s six key considerations for designing compelling customer experiences, before unpacking each one:

Experience takeaways

A way of defining how you want someone to feel as a consequence of using your product and service.

The genuine moments that disrupt attention and deliver a positive feeling about your brand and a benefit to the user.

Experience versioning

Designing the first use and nth use experience and what the end point feels like.

Behavioural change

You can’t just design a new experience and expect someone to repeatedly use it. Creating new habits, and sustaining those habits, needs designing into the system.

Experience value

Measuring the value of the experience and its impact on the business, across customer satisfaction, revenue and operational efficiency.

A panel discussion then saw Olivia Salisbury of T.Rowe Price and Shane Williams of UBS SmartWealth talk openly about the challenges they faced creating new products and services in their own business environments. They touched on how they measured effectiveness and how they actively adapt, based on client feedback.

Else is an experience design consultancy which works with the likes of Adidas and Shell.

Else is an Experience Design consultancy. We believe that when it comes to people, experience is everything. What we do. We help those responsible for the future of their business to discover new oppo...